Stravaganza: City of Dreams
by Sincerely Anonymous
Summary: Hope Martine is chosen as the new Stravaganti to the City of Dreams. In Talia, there is a marriage that awaits but danger is lurking. The Manoush are in trouble once again when they enter the source of the Di Chimici power to rebel against the magic laws.
1. Dream State

**Stravaganza: City of Dreams**

Chapter One: Dream State

Hope Martine was aimlessly trying to dream. Dream of a place beyond the walls of her prison. She suffered and all she could do was bury her head in the sand. She felt as though it wasn't her place to say anything at all. She was left alone with nowhere to go, only to hide in its security. The noises were filtered out from around as she stared into a vast and empty space. She sighed as she examined the applesauce with her spoon. Barnsbury Comprehensive…ever so dry. She looked around the cafeteria as she saw the other students laughing and gossiping. She sat alone at her table with barely an appetite to eat at all because everyone thought she was weird.

Hope was anything but weird. She was actually really just a dreamer of all shapes and sizes. She had a passion for dance and she fluttered across the dance classroom as if she hadn't had a care in the world. She was talented at dance but she had an anxiety that was quite common, stage fright. It had all changed in the last year though, she had become more timid and introverted. She lost focus on what she had a passion for. Everything seemed dim in her life because of what had happened. She avoided the subject with Barnsbury and her friends. Her friends left her six months ago in the dust after she radically changed.

She glanced over at a table filled with famous former and current students of Barnsbury. They were interning at Barnsbury for three months but it still felt like they weren't in was Sky Meadows, Georgia O'Grady, Matt Wood, Nick Duke who was the sixth former, Isabel Evans, and occasionally Ayesha or Charlie Evans. They were sort of looked up to in the school. Sky was the artist and Isabel, his new girlfriend was too. They would go to US after this term. Isabel was courageous willing to do just about anything. Georgia was defiant and intimidating environmentalist buff. Nick was her boyfriend and now captain of the fencing team. Matt was the athlete with his girlfriend, the beautiful Ayesha. They were all handsome and beautiful, the perfect little group. She laughed cynically to herself. Typical high school life with typical high school drama.

She had a sudden flashback and dropped her metal spoon as she tried to get a grip of herself. It clattered to the floor with a big clank and she felt as if every student in the lunch room fell silent. They turned as they observed her pick it up, whispering useless phrases between themselves. She breathed in and out as she tried to smile. She must conceal everything. She knew what they were whispering about though. _The accident._

* * *

Georgia watched the girl as she picked up the metal spoon. A little smile spread across the girl's face and she went to throw away her lunch. It was a good fake smile like one of those Nick would show after he got a fencing injury. False happiness doesn't bring joy.

"What happened to her?" Isabel whispered as she took some of Sky's mashed potatoes. "She used to be so, oh I don't really know…fluttery?"

"Well, she is different because of what happened to her. Her mother died last year…it was because of a car accident in the rain last year. Remember when the streets flooded?" Sky said as he shielded his mashed potatoes. Isabel frowned.

"She must feel awful. I wouldn't know what to do without my mother." Isabel said as she followed the girl with her eyes. Nick was unsettled a bit by the conversation. He didn't have his real mother or father in this world. Georgia looked deeply into his eyes as if she knew what he was thinking. Nick smiled weakly back a Georgia. Georgia swore that she had seen her somewhere else, but where?

Matt and the others looked at each other uncomfortably. Losing someone was hard and a difficult journey. They all understood that as they remembered Luciano or Lucien as he was known before.

* * *

Ludo, Aurelio and Rafaela travelled down a dark corridor in black robes which covered their bright colored attire. They gazed silently around to see if anyone was there. They were in _their _territory and the whole community of the Manoush could be at stake if they were found.

The city was silent since the magic laws were put in place and they could no longer worship their goddess. They knocked on a cellar door as Rafaela kept watch. The door creaked opened and they entered from the cobble stoned street. Ludo cautiously closed it as he took a final analysis to see if it was safe and that no one saw them.

They swiftly paced down a hall way and they began to hear the soothing sounds of their music. They quietly opened the door to see a hall as big as a grand ballroom open up before them. There were gypsies dancing, corteo card readings and people talking about interpretation of dreams. The three Manoush were here on a mission to create an uprising against the magic laws. They were at the heart of the situation, in the city where dreams come true, Bellona.

Ludo and the others threw off their robes to show their true selves. Ludo felt so constricted since he could not dance in the moonlight under the stars as many had done in Bellona before the magic laws. He breathed deeply as he saw the whirling colors, the rustle and the jingle of the bells on a person's clothing. He began to dance with happiness as the music filled his ears.

* * *

Hope walked quickly as she smiled delightfully at everyone who passed. She had to keep the act up as she practically ran to the restroom. She opened the door like 'a normal person should' and sighed with relief there was no one there. She then hide behind the trash can as she dropped her books and curled up into a ball. She cried silently as the images came flashing back. She couldn't stop them.

She was in the car that day next to her mother in the passenger's seat. They were arguing over whether she should audition for a London dance troupe or not. Her mother shook her head no a hundred times over as Hope carefully explained her passion for this. It was raining, pouring down rain to where her mother could barely see out the windows. It was a common thing for rainy days to happen during the spring but that day it was different. Her mother saw a person in the road running across as the car came and she turned the wheel to avoid it. Hope screamed as the car was flung into a spinning motion and tried to grab her mother's hand. They crashed into a lamppost and her mother died instantly as Hope secured her mother's hand in the last split second. She saw her mother's lifeless face, with a bloody tear running down from her right eye.

She wiped her eyes as they blurred and she came back to reality. Her mother was gone, dead. She had no one to talk to. Not even a father. Her father died soon after her birth due to complications of the heart. Her mother coped with her misery through her daughter by making every moment filled with happiness and beauty. Hope grew up to have an imagination, a passion for everything and putting herself fully in everything she did. It all changed after the accident happened. The medical personnel could not get her to let go of her mother's hand. She never got to say good bye but she had argued with her mother about something insignificant. She would never dance again.

She couldn't dance. She was incapable of it. She broke down when she began and would refuse to finish. Her mother encouraged her to follow her dream but disagreed with her fulfill her aspirations before she graduated from Barnsbury and an university. She said an education was a good thing and that it does not limit your success but broadens it. She closed her eyes and tried to dream, nothing. She then stood up and washed her face.

She went to class and slipped in the back of the history classroom. The teacher looked up and caught her eyes which she smiled waveringly and then he continued to lecture. She took notes diligently but the horrible thoughts were still there, she forced herself to focus.

She quickly walked home. She glanced back and forth at the beauty around her but she couldn't look. She had to find her way home. She had taken a wrong turn and ended up in front of the Mulhollands. Their home was big and grand, she envisioned a palace. She shuffled away in regret of her tiny imagining. Lucien had died several years ago and she tried not to think about it.

Do they use to suffer as much as she did now? She knew that Nick Duke had made their lives beautifully happy and she was overjoyed by that fact. She had no one. She managed to pass going into child care services by becoming the age of 18 last year. It was a relief that her mother had been saving a sufficient amount of money to pay for her college. She worked on through the week to manage to scrap together enough change to pay the bills at Cafénytime.

She had no other relatives on either side of her family. Her mother was an only child and her grandparents had died several years ago by age. Her father however had a brother but he died when he was twenty five due to a heart attack. Her father's parents died when her father went to college on a mission's trip to Africa. They had caught a virus and their immune system wasn't strong.

Her family was full of death but she had never thought about such things until after the accident. Her mother didn't let her think about such things. She gardened away the pain and let her daughter grow up without suffering. Hope remembered the stories her mother use to tell before she went to bed. They were so magical yet so real.

* * *

Nick looked out his window of the third floor as he chatted with his friends over cookies. He pointed out the person to Georgia and she gasped. He had guessed right, it was the girl from earlier today. He wondered why she was on his street, her house was in the opposite direction, if he remembered correctly.

Sky and Isabel laughed as Matt squirted milk out of his nose. Ayesha sighed and covered her face from embarrassment. he couldn't help but laugh either but a dark feeling was lingering in his heart. Georgia squeezed his hand and he he felt the darkness go away as it always had when he gazed into her eyes.

They continued their conversation that was Stravaganti free. They still had their worries about Talia but had become accustomed to daily life. It had been a year and they were all happy as Luciano and Arianna who were planning their wedding ceremony.

* * *

Hope gazed around at the street signs and turned on the route she thought was right. Her mind was fuzzy and she couldn't quite remember the directions, right away.

She lingered on a shop corner and an antique shop had caught her eye. She use to love entering old antique shops and sit around for hours gazing at the treasures around her. They were all full of potential, a dream in every one of the objects. She remembered this one, it belonged to a…Mr. Mortimer Goldsmith whose wife had died years ago before she entered Barnsbury. She was just a child then.

She entered the shop and Mr. Goldsmith was rustling around back.

"Georgia, is that you? or is it Nickolas?" He came up front and gave a surprised expression. "Ah, a new young lady, I presume. Could I help you find something?" She glanced back and forth and shook her head no as she gave him a fake smile.

She dropped her bag at the door and went back and forth between the aisles and stacks of books. The shop was cluttered but not in a bad way. She leafed through some dusty books that had illustrations in gold and for several moments she had a hint of a dream, of a far of place where she could prune away all her fears and sadness.


	2. Drifting

**Stravaganza: City of Dreams**

Chapter Two: Drifting

Ludo was filled with happiness as he swirled around the room still keeping an observant eye on the Bellonan gypsies. They were showing a guise of joy. They read the Corteo cards as their dresses jingled. He caught the eye of several woman who gave a nod of improvement as he danced. He smiled as he saw Aurelio and Rafaela dancing together. He wasn't as strong as them but he was willing to die for what he believed in. It had been over a year since their last trial and it scared many of the Manoush. They trusted him and they wanted the magic laws to disappear so they must get Giglia's sister city to repel the laws. The City of Dreams was known for going with whatever Giglia did.

Prince Jacopo the younger had a mind unaffected by the Di Chimici corruption and was very oblivious to what went on with murder conspiracies, spies and whatever else the elder Di Chimicis were planning. He was carefree and lenient and the City became to be known to be full of magic, gypsies, and the interpretations of dreams.

Ludo believed with Aurelio and Rafaela that they could convince the Prince to repel the law since much of their tourism was from the the gypsies of Bellona. He prayed to the Goddess that he would be willing to do this than bring them to their deaths.

There were still too many risks in it all. He was a Di Chimici after all and would must likely burn them at the stake. Ludo escaped from the hide out and walked the streets of Bellona in a dark cloak. It was night and he navigated around to see how much the city had changed since his last visit.

Bellona had high walls around it and a few towers scattered about. Bellona had never felt barricaded like it did now. There were colorful banners and people dancing in the streets. Tiny colored flames tossing to and fro in a gypsy's hands and fireworks going off every so often with their colors, decorating the night sky. Bellona was dark. No lights lighted the streets but only a flame that a passerby would have to navigate his way home. The silence of Bellona irritated Ludo as he walked to the central square where a fountain was running. The gypsies use to make beautiful music by using their magic to manipulate the flow of the water. All he heard now was the mournful song that came from the fountain. Bellona was lifeless without its dreams.

* * *

Prince Jacopo sat quietly from his manor and watched as the lifeless city fell asleep. Bellona never slept before his family agreed to pass the anti magic laws. He even indulged in a few fortunes that the gypsies told him every so often. He sighed as he vaguely remembered how the main square use to be filled with life, people laughing and having fun. He went over to his bed and went to sleep. All he could do was sleep. A weight fell on the city, a heavy blanket that could not be lifted.

* * *

Hope sighed. It felt as though she was free. She was set free. She heard something drop in the room and it dawned on her it was later in the evening. All the objects she had seen life in before were dim and dark. She put away the dusty books and picked up her things and left.

She didn't know how she found her way home. She saw flashes of cars and street lamps but most of all, there were ominous looming shadows everywhere she turned. She ran up the steps her small cottage. It was a tiny place but it was cozy. She was frightened by the night that she did not even do her ritual throughout the house. She usually walked around the house and turned the lights on; this was not the case today. She dropped her bags and ran into her mother's bedroom and got beneath the covers. She fell asleep, crying for someone to hold her.

The next morning, she awoke with a sluggish feeling. She could not move as the sunlight filtered in from the curtains. It danced around her form. She disruptively turned to avoid it. School was not an option for today. She had already been absent several times but her teachers never complained because she turned in the work in a timely manner. It was her mother's dying wish for her to study, and there was no way she would break that.

As the day crept on, she tossed and turned beneath the lilac smelling covers. She breathed it in deeply, it was her own ecstasy. The scent left lingering on the sheets was only her mother's scent.

* * *

The former Stravaganti students sat at their usually lunch table. They talked about school subjects. Finally, it had come to the portion of their conversation that sparked the most interest in all of them: Talia.

"Talia has been quiet after all it has been through. I wonder how the Duke and Duchess of Bellezza are doing…Luciano should be having fun, ruling his own city." Matt said jokingly as he wrapped his arm around Ayesha. Ayesha, who had felt awkward in these conversations, leaned her head against his shoulder. She smiled as they talked about their adventures and painted a landscape inside her mind.

Sky chuckled as he flung his mashed potatoes down on his plate "He is probably sitting back relaxing while we have a Physics test next period." Isabel looked up at him with wide eyes and began to flip through her notes like a madman.

"You will do fine, Bel. You get the best grades out of all of us here." Georgia said as she waved good bye to Charlie, who was unusually quiet today. Georgia looked at Isabel for confirmation; they had had another brother sister fight. Georgia remembered those days but her situation was a bit more serious.

Nick was mapping out fencing diagrams for his new team and having sky help him draw the figures. Nick jabbed his fork to and fro as Sky tried to translate them. She smiled to herself; they didn't talk much about Talia anymore because it was at peace or what looked like peace at least. It had been for months.

* * *

Hope laid there tossing and turning trying to sleep. She was filled with this terrible itch that she couldn't heal. It was within her skin and she desperately tried to make it cease. She finally got up out of bed. She folded the sheets with the upmost care and dosed it with her mother's lilac perfume. She opened the windows and let the light filter in.

She changed out of pajamas and took the laundry hamper to the laundry room. She looked at her watch. It was 1:15pm. She busied herself with doing the daily chores that had been unwilling handed to her. She did them only to stop thinking about all the times she had refused to do them. _Never again_. She couldn't go outside until 4pm so she was stuck in a rotting world of ennui. She read an old book of fairy tales holding back the tears of tender moments as a child. She dusted the furniture, especially the picture frames. She gazed at the beautiful picture of her mother smiling at her for what seemed like hours. She was so alone in that tiny house. She looked at the clock again 3:42pm. She rummaged through the fridge to look for something to eat.

Her mother made marvelous meals but Hope had only gotten half of her cooking talent. She pulled out some rice and greens. She heated it up and watched the birds sing their sweet songs. She sighed and looked at the clock. It was 4:07pm.

She ate quickly to get to her job. She worked today and she couldn't afford to miss it. She worked at Cafénytime. She recently got hired because they offered her more hours. She had to make a good impression if she wanted to get a raise. She still had quite a feat to make up a third of the money for her college fees. She was doing this in the memory of her mother. She needed to go to college.

She got there just in time and put on her uniform to take orders. She went about serving mocha lattes, skinny caps, and a chocochoco chip mocha decaf latte. Her head was spinning when 5:00 o'clock came around. Too many coffee names to understand. They walked in. It was the same people: Isabel, Sky, Nick, Georgia and Matt. She bit her lip from frustration. The café was on the other side of town (she made sure) and how could they come here!

Conveniently they sat in her area for orders. She slowly walked over and smiled delightfully. "What can I get for you all?" she said as she went through the pain of keeping the fakeness of her smile invisible.

"Don't you go to our school?" Georgia asked. The others looked up at her and there was an instant connection. _The accident_. She pulled her hair back and nodded her head averting her eyes. The smile disappeared.

Nick broke the silence and piped up "Iced coffee for me and her. He will take a green tea and she will take some coffee. He'll take straight black." They all looked at Nick. "What, you guys are so obvious; you order the same thing every time. We will all take a round of cheesecake" They laughed as she left the scene.

She breathed in deep breaths and made the orders. She gave them their orders and shuffled away swiftly so they wouldn't have a chance to ask her questions. She clocked out and went on her way home. She didn't realize that her steps had landed her in front of Mr. Goldsmith's antique shop again. Was she fated to come here or was it just a comforting place where her feet knew? She stepped once again into the shop.

* * *

Luciano was not relaxing. Not even in the least. He had places to be and there was no stopping to take a single breath. He glanced over at the Duchess lovingly as she stared at him with her mesmerizing purple eyes. They were standing in the front of a crowd announcing the construction of a new canal through Bellezza. He was taking a break from his studies but this barely felt like a break.

He had been running like for lack of Talian phrase 'an energizer bunny'. He had three different events this morning and now it was only striking noon. He felt as if he was married to the Duchess already. His wedding day was getting closer but it was still far off. Rodolfo kept setting it back for political reasons. He wanted to make sure they were both safe away from threatening figures.

He only knew that he would always be in love with Arianna no matter how long they would have to wait.


End file.
